


coming home to you

by shadowsinwinter



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Some angst, beca is an oblivious idiot, brief mentions of Chicago, but fluff at the end, but it's okay chloe still loves her anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 04:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14127783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsinwinter/pseuds/shadowsinwinter
Summary: (Post PP3) It takes 8 months and a love song for Beca to finally figure out what she wants.





	coming home to you

Beca shifts nervously in her seat when DJ Khaled pulls his headphones off, staring at her with the small frown that he has whenever he’s trying to figure out how to say something mildly unpleasant.

“It’s just the first draft,” she blurts out even before he can open his mouth. “It’s not the final tracklist, and some of the songs aren’t fully finished, and I was thinking of getting Emily’s help with some of the –“

He raises his hand, and she falls silent, biting her lip.

“It’s… not bad,” he says finally, after another minute of nerve-wracking silence. Beca relaxes visibly. _Not bad_. She can work with that. “But…”

“But?” she resumes chewing on her lip, barely stifling a swear when she breaks the skin and the sharp coppery tang of blood hits her tongue.

“It’s…” He frowns again. “Can you write something… I don’t know, happier?”

“Uh, what?” She blinks at him – out of all the criticism that she’s steeled herself to face when she walked into his office this morning, this was not it. She’d expected something along the lines of “this is shit, rewrite the entire album again” or “it needs to be a lot better before we can sell this”, not a “not bad, but needs to be happier”. Frankly, she’s more than a little confused, and watches as he leans back in his chair with a heavy sigh, steepling his fingers together.

“Your songs are great, and honestly, I like them. I really do, Beca, you’re good at writing them, even if you don’t think so. But don’t you think they’re all a little… melancholic?” He slides the tracklist she’d submitted to him back over the table, and she picks it up. “I’m not saying that it’s bad, but it’d be great if we could have some variety on your first album. Write something fun. Or sweet. You know what? A love song would do the trick.”

“I don’t do fun or sweet,” she tells him. He may be her boss, but over the year she’s worked under him, they’ve developed a kind of rapport that allows her to voice her opinions to him. “You know that – you know _me_.”

“You never know until you try,” he tells her, dismissing her with a wave of his hand, so she stands up obediently and turns to leave. “Oh, and Beca?”

“Yeah?”

He squints at her carefully. “You look tired – you’ve worked hard all this year, so take a break, okay? Your album is nearly done, you can take some time off. Sleep in, think about the song, and I want it on my table in, say, a week.”

“Yeah,” she shrugs away his concern. She knows she looks exhausted – she can’t remember the last time she’s actually slept through the night. But how can she explain to him the hollow ache that grips her deep in her chest whenever she lies down in her apartment, the pain that keeps her awake and writing songs about loss and heartbreak and prevents her from sleeping? How can she explain to someone why she feels as though she’s missing something all the time when she barely understands this feeling?

She leaves the studio early that day, waving a quick goodbye to Emily, who’s moved out to LA and signed on to the same label as soon as she’s graduated. It would’ve made sense for the two girls to become flatmates, but then Benji came out west soon after and the couple moved in together, leaving Beca to return to an empty apartment. The click of the lock echoes around the empty house, and Beca tosses her keys carelessly onto the counter, crossing over to stare out at the landscape before her.

In a city of four million people, Beca suddenly feels inexplicably _lonely_.

She’s grown soft, she thinks. Grown used to the constant presence of the other girls – her _family_ – around her, first at the Bellas house, then in the apartment that she’d shared with Chloe and Amy together. The memory of Chloe makes her heart twinge – they’ve tried to keep in touch even with the 400 mile gap between UC Davis and LA, but then Chloe’s been busy with vet school and Chicago, and Beca’s been occupied with her work, and they’d drifted apart. It’s been four, maybe five months since they’ve last spoken to each other, and even that last phone call – Chloe telling her that she’s broken up with Chicago, and Beca trying to comfort her – had been fleeting, cut short by Chloe rushing off to class.

Her finger hovers over the call button for a second, then she remembers that Chloe has clinical lab on Thursdays, which means that she’ll be in school till eight.

She calls the second best option instead.

“Hello? Beca?”

“Hey, Bree,” she can’t help the small smile that lifts her lips at the sound of her friend’s voice. “Are you busy?”

“A little,” the blonde sounds vaguely distracted, Beca’s pretty sure she can hear someone shouting in the background and decides not to ask. “But I can spare some time. What’s up?”

“Just calling to say hi, I guess,” she shrugs, before remembering that Aubrey can’t see the action. “I missed you, you know?”

“Someone call the news, this is gonna make the headlines: the hobbit has feelings,” Aubrey snarks back in return, though there’s no sting in it. “How’s the album coming along?”

“It’s taking a little longer than expected,” she confesses truthfully. Down the line, she can hear Aubrey heave a sigh of sympathy.

“It’ll be alright. Don’t work yourself too hard, okay?”

Beca stares down the phone in disbelief for a second, before letting out a snort, “Says the pot to the kettle.” They’re workaholics, the both of them – Aubrey telling her to stop working is pretty much akin to Stacie telling her to have less sex. (Not that she’s having any, she’s been too busy to even _think_ about her love life, thank you very much for asking.)

Aubrey’s voice softens slightly. “Yeah, but Em tells me that you’ve been skipping sleep to work. Take care of yourself, Beca, and don’t worry so much about the album. It’s going to be great, I _know_ it. Look – it’s great talking to you, but I _really_ have to go.”

“Yeah,” Beca murmurs. "Talk to you soon."

Her smile drops the moment she hangs up, though – the call leaves her feeling hollower than ever, and she mopes around aimlessly before remembering that she owes Khaled a song.

And it’s not like Beca’s _not_ trying because she’s nothing but wholehearted when it comes to music, but then the days tick past and she still has nothing passable to show, so she picks up the phone five hours before she’s supposed to send him the song, and calls Emily out of desperation.

“I need help,” she begins without preamble the moment she hears Emily pick up.

“Beca, it’s four in the morning,” Emily mumbles back down the line, her voice hoarse with sleep. “Can’t it wait till we get into work?”

She can hear some shuffling on the other end, and Emily whispering, “No, it’s just Becs,” and figures that she must’ve woken Benji up with the phone call as well. She feels a quick twinge of remorse, but she knows that _really_ needs to get this sorted this out, so she presses on. “It’s kind of urgent, actually.”

“Yeah?” Emily sounds more awake now. “Your album?”

“Mm,” Beca grumbles. “Khaled wants me to write a love song.”

“And this is urgent enough to wake me up at four?” The younger woman grumbles.

“He wants it by tomorrow – no, today, and I don’t – Em, I literally have no clue where to begin,” she huffs, running her hand through her hair in frustration. “I’ve already told him that I’m not the sappy love song kind of person, but he’s not listening, and he wants me to have –“

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Emily cuts her off in the middle of her rant, and she hears a badly-stifled yawn. “So what’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem?” She hisses down the phone. “Em, I don’t even know where to _begin_ , I’ve never been _in love_ , for fuck’s sake.”

“Yes, you have,” Emily tells her in the tone of voice Beca normally uses to address idiots, and there’s a part of Beca’s brain that observes that Em’s been hanging out with her too much, she’s even picking up her _mannerisms_.

“Are you talking about Jesse? Because if so, then ew,” Beca wrinkles her nose, and she can hear the younger woman huff impatiently down the line.

“ _What?_ No, not Jesse – look, forget it. Forget I said anything.”

There’s a minute of dead air for a moment, before Beca breaks the silence.

“What is it like?” she whispers down the line, and Emily is quiet for a second.

“Love?”

“Yeah.”

“Between me and Benji?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s… home,” she begins, then before Beca and protest and insist on a better explanation, she carries on. “He makes me happy and feel alive, and whenever we touch I still feel the same old butterflies beneath my skin, and it’s exciting and warm and whenever I’m back in his arms, I feel safe. Loved. I feel home.”

And Beca doesn’t reply immediately, because Emily’s words have sparked off a series of memories in her mind – she remembers a flash of red hair and bright blue eyes, ambushing her in the shower, the same red hair and blue eyes right in her face, insisting that they’re going to be really fast friends, Chloe snuggling up to her while they stream a Netflix marathon, Chloe smiling widely at her when they agreed to move in together, Chloe hugging her the day she broke up with Jesse, sitting in the toilet with her and rubbing her back when she threw up after a night of bar hopping, Chloe being _there_ for her, just _holding_ her, Chloe in their apartment in NYC welcoming her _home_ every night, and suddenly she can’t breathe, because even though Chloe is probably deeply asleep right now and four hundred miles away, the only thing that Beca can see and can think about is _Chloe, Chloe, Chloe_.

“Chloe,” she croaks down the line.

“Yes,” Emily says softly, and Beca’s too overwhelmed to thank her before she hangs up, fingers trembling, and then she’s dialling Aubrey’s number for the second time in twelve hours.

Aubrey picks up on the first ring. “Oh my god, Beca, when you said that you missed me, I must have severely underestimated how much.”

Beca opens her mouth to speak, but she can’t get the words out past the lump in her throat.

“Hello? Beca? Are you here?”

She finally wrestles her throat under control. “Chloe,” she manages. “What’s her address?”

“Why now?” There is an undercurrent of warning in Aubrey’s voice. “Beca, what are you doing?”

“Aubrey, _please,_ ” her voice cracks, and for a long moment, Aubrey doesn’t reply. Beca’s beginning to think that she’s hung up, but then –

“I’ll text it to you. Don’t – I love you, Beca, you’re one of my best friends, but if you hurt her again…”

“I won’t,” she promises quietly, and feels her phone vibrate against her ear with a new incoming message. “Thank you.”

“Do you know why it never worked out between her and Chicago?” Aubrey asks, more gently now. Beca shakes her head, forgetting that Aubrey can’t see her, but the blonde simply carries on. “She’s been waiting for you for _years_ , Beca Mitchell. She’s never really gotten over you. Don’t mess this up.”

“I won’t,” she mutters fiercely again, stuffing clothes haphazardly into a duffel bag. By the time Aubrey hangs up, she’s already halfway out of the door, passport and bag in hand.

Beca is jittery the entire trip from her apartment to the airport, and even more nervous by the time her flight takes off – she’s scared of flying, but even more terrified of Chloe’s reaction when she turns up at her door. She hasn’t had the chance to call Chloe, knowing the redhead would be asleep, and worries at her lip, fretting. What if she’s an unwelcome presence in Chloe’s life, what if Chloe’s moved on and found someone else, what if Aubrey is wrong and Beca isn’t what Chloe wants?

Her lip is a bloody mess by the time she lands in Sacramento International Airport, and then it’s another forty minute drive to Chloe’s apartment. She reckons that she must be worrying the cab driver, because he keeps shooting her anxious glances through the rear-view mirror – not that she can blame him. Despite her best efforts at cleaning up in the airport washroom, she looks haggard and pale, and her lip is still bleeding.

“We’re her-” Beca shoves a wad of cash at him and hurtles out of the cab even before he’s finished speaking, taking the steps up to Chloe’s third floor apartment three at a time, swearing when she trips over the carpet, bruising her knee. Picking herself up, she shuffles over to the door, triple checking the number – Apt. 14 – crosses her fingers, and knocks, praying that Chloe is awake.

She hears an achingly familiar voice call out “Just a second!”, hears the shuffling of feet behind the door, and then it opens, and Chloe is standing _right there_ , just in front of her.

“Beca?” Chloe looks confused, but smiles warmly down at her. Something that’s been missing since the end of the USO tour slides back into place deep within her, comforting and familiar and _oh_ , she feels as though she’s finally come _home_. The oh-so-familiar expression breaks the tenuous restraint Beca has on her emotions, and with tears blurring her vision, she takes two steps forwards and flings her arms around Chloe’s neck.

Chloe lets out a surprised squeak, but wraps her arms around Beca’s waist, pulling her closer and Beca _breaks_ , sobbing into the redhead’s shoulder. She wants to talk, to _explain_ , but eight months of worth of sadness and heartbreak and _missing Chloe_ is hitting her all at once and she’s crying too hard to actually speak, so she settles for tightening her hold around Chloe, trying to tell her what she cannot put into words just yet. Chloe’s embrace is warm, and Beca lets herself sink into it like she used to, lets Chloe guide her to the couch. She’s pretty sure that she can hear Chloe talking to her too, a litany of comforting words, but she can’t really make out anything over the thundering of her heartbeat in her ears.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe asks, when Beca’s finally calmed down slightly, though she still sounds delighted and somewhat surprised.

“I came to see you.” She pulls away, sitting on the opposite end of the couch, suddenly feeling cold without Chloe’s arms around her. It’s nice to be held by Chloe and bask in her sweet scent again, but it’s also incredibly distracting, and Beca really needs to focus. “I… I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Chloe replies confusedly. “But –”

“Wait, no, let me finish,” Beca runs her fingers through her hair, trying to force herself to think. She only has one shot at this, one shot to put everything right, but then Chloe is staring at her, her eyes soft and warm, and the speech she’s put together on the way here is completely forgotten, leaving her to stutter on in broken sentences. “I, no, you, no wait – I mean –”

“Becs,” Chloe takes her hands in hers. “Relax. It’s only me.”

So Beca takes a deep breath, begins again.

“I didn’t know that I was missing you until Khaled told me to write a love song.” She can see Chloe frown at the absurdity of the statement, and has to suppress a snort of hysterical laughter herself. “It’s just, after I moved to LA, I haven’t been sleeping well, and it always felt like something was missing, y’know? The apartment felt so empty even though Emily moved in with me, and then when she left with Benji, it felt, I dunno, hollow. It – I always felt like there was something incomplete, like I was missing something but I didn’t know _what_ , until Khaled told me to write a love song and I called Em for help because, well, I can’t write a love song if I’ve never actually been in love, right? But she told me that loving someone is like coming home and that’s when I realised –”

She doesn’t know how much of that rambling speech Chloe understood, but the slow smile spreading across the redhead’s face encourages her, so she pushes on. “I realised that it wasn’t something I was missing all along, it was _someone_. It was _you_. I missed you the moment I left New York and moved to LA, and I was missing you all these months we spent apart. I need you, Chlo… I’ve been in love with you all along, I just never realised it. You’re my home.”

The final three words catch in her throat, and she blinks up at Chloe helplessly for a second, before managing to force them out.

“I love you.”

Chloe just stares at her without moving for a second, long enough for Beca to begin fretting that she’s managed to freak Chloe out, and she starts worrying at her lip again. Then Chloe moves so that she’s sitting right in front of Beca, and she’s reaching out, and –

Beca’s eyes flutter closed when Chloe’s hand cups her cheek, carefully tugging her lip from between her teeth.

“I would like to kiss you now,” Chloe breathes, and Beca nods, and forces her eyes open.

“Please,” she murmurs, trying not to sound too desperate, but she can see the flicker of amusement on Chloe’s face, and knows that she’s probably failed.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on that, though, because Chloe’s lips are on hers, and the sting of her cut is completely forgotten when Chloe runs her tongue across her bottom lip delicately, seeking entrance that is immediately granted. Beca moans into the kiss, her hands sliding up to bury slender fingers in fiery red hair, pulling Chloe closer, until the redhead is straddling her lap. When they finally pull apart, Beca is breathless, and Chloe is laughing.

“ _Finally_ ,” the redhead runs her thumbs over Beca’s cheeks, which are still flushed red. “I’ve been waiting for you for _years_.”

“I was such an idiot,” she confesses quietly, and Chloe smiles.

“But you’re _my_ idiot now –” She breaks off, staring at Beca, wide-eyed. “Are you vibrating?”

“Am I – oh, _fuck_ ,” Beca pulls her phone out of her pocket, where it’s been demanding for attention the past fifteen minutes, and winces at the 7 missed calls from Theo and 13 unread messages from Emily. She shoots off a quick message to Theo:

 _Beca: Sorry, I can’t come in to work today – something’s cropped up. Ask Khaled to give me another two days off, I’ll write another 2 songs for him, as sappy as he wants them to be_.

Chloe slips her hands under Beca’s shirt, fingertips skimming lightly across her skin, and Beca inhales sharply. “Chlo…”

The redhead doesn’t say anything in reply, but leans forwards, nipping lightly at Beca’s neck, and Beca can’t help the shiver that crawls down her spine.

Fuck it, she decides.

She shoots Theo a second message, before tossing her phone onto the couch and letting Chloe pull her towards the bedroom:

 _Beca: One week. Make it one week of leave, I will give him a whole album of sappy love songs when I return_.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to leave comments, hope you guys liked it!


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